Monthly Archives: July 2010

Pointless Nostalgia

“A Bunch of the Boys Were Whoopin’ It Up in the Malamute Saloon…”

It’s been a brutal July thus far, on pace to be the hottest one in history. (Strangely enough, all those Brave Truth-Tellers who screamed about global warming being fake when it was sort-of cold in April are nowhere to be found.) I’m trying my best to beat the heat by thinking cold thoughts. This is a psychological technique known as Self Delusion.

While trying to find some Cold Thought Fodder, I ran across this video, and I’m so glad I did. This is an excerpt from an episode of Jean Shepherd’s America about Alaska.

Jean Shepherd, radio host, author, and raconteur (who I’ve written about here before), had a PBS program that ran for two widely separated seasons: 1971 and 1985. The later season was decent, and is readily available on DVD via eBay and similar outlets. The earlier season, which predated the VCR, is not in general circulation, except for a few episodes that were rerun in 1985. That’s is a shame, because I’ve seen many of these episodes and they are AMAZING.

The reason I’ve seen them is because I did some research for Excelsior, You Fathead!, the Jean Shepherd biography penned by Eugene Bergmann. Part of this research included a trip up to WGBH in Boston, which produced this series and a few other once-off programs starring Shep (including a bizarre show from 1961 in which Shep stood on a wharf in Boston Harbor and just riffed for a half hour, much like he did on his nightly radio show). I had the privilege of delving into their vast video archives, and came back truly stunned by what I saw.

The original series of Jean Shepherd’s America is a wonderful, vibrant time capsule. It was shot on video, which was still in its infancy back then (the producer, Fred Barzyk, told me the poor cameramen were weighed down by bulky nigh-prototypes). But because it wasn’t shot on film, which can age poorly, the footage appears as if it was shot yesterday. The episodes are all pretty much like the excerpt above: Simple shots of quiet, everyday occurrences, with Shepherd’s inimitable narration.

There’s a mind-blowing episode (“It Won’t Always Be This Way…”) about new planned communities and mobile homes. It ends with chilling footage of ghost town on the site of an old mining boom town, as Shep talks about how mankind always moves on, looking for bigger and better things, and how one day this whole planet may be similarly abandoned as we seek greener pastures out among the cosmos.

My description is not doing it justice. If there is a just god, he will make sure everyone gets to see this in some format, some day.

I also can’t think of Shep and The Cold without thinking of the poems of Robert Service. In the winter months, Shep would devote parts of shows, and sometimes entire shows, to reading this now-obscure but once ubiquitous verse. Service’s poems all depict depraved goldpanners trying to make a buck or start trouble in the frozen Yukon wasteland, who all find death in some gruesome manner or another.

My father was a huge Jean Shepherd fan, and this was one of his favorite features of the show. He loved to recite the first line of Service’s poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” in a deep, Shep-like vibrato: A bunch of the boys were whoopin’ it up in the Malamute Saloon…

Ironically, my father died five years ago this summer in snowy, faraway land (very long story). So I think he would take perverse pleasure in hearing this Shep rendition of another Service poem, “The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill”, which comes from his program on January 15, 1965.

[audio:http://66.147.244.95/~scratci7/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/blasbill1.mp3|titles=Jean Shepherd: The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill (January 15, 1965)]

And just for good measure, here’s Shep doing another one of his favorite routines: singing loudly (and badly) along to a ragtime piano rendition of an old timey tune.

[audio:http://66.147.244.95/~scratci7/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/afteryouvegone1.mp3|titles=Jean Shepherd: “After You’ve Gone”]
Tuneage

The Venn Intersection of Stupid, Entitled, and Untalented

luthercampbell.jpgWriting is hard. Writing on a deadline is especially hard. I don’t envy reporters who have to file daily or even weekly, because some days, the mental pen runs dry and there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it.

So I almost wanna give Dan LeBatard a mulligan on this article from last Sunday’s Miami Herald, entitled “Miami Heat’s 3 Live Crew has rapper Campbell jazzed” (which would have escaped me entirely, but for a tweet from @scharpling). Look, it’s the summer and who can concentrate on writing, especially in Miami? Maybe he just decided to throw a bunch of crap in one piece, hope to connect the pieces, and move on.

But when a writer does verbal contortions to connect Luther Campbell to LeBron James, I can’t let that go uncommented upon.

LeBatard’s premise: By joining the Heat, LeBron has proved himself a rebel and provocateur, much like Luther Campbell did when he “shocked” America in the late 80s/early 90s. Yup. Here’s the money quote:

Rebels and pioneers and villains create many emotions. Indifference is not one of them.

Oof.

LeBatard tries to tie Campbell to LeBron by several unstable threads. For one, he tries to compare the completely over-the-top and tone deaf introduction of LeBron and Chris Bosh in Miami to the Miami Hurricane teams of the early 90s.

Campbell was at the center of those epic and hated University of Miami football teams that changed college football’s landscape from marching bands and sis-boom-blah to something a lot more fun and envied and despised and different. It was an insane time and an insane team, a controversial rap star on the sidelines, putting cash bounties on Notre Dame players as the violent and fast Hurricanes team he cheered devoured college football with the kind of teeth and hunger you see when piranhas are feeding.

Yeah, that sounds just like something the Heat should try and emulate. That Miami football team where no one went to class and they pretended to shoot players on the sideline and falsified federal loan applications. What a time to be young!

Both LeBatard and Campbell try to spin this as if people are upset about LeBron, Bosh, and Dwayne Wade engineering the move to Miami on their own, because we all can’t stand young, talented, black athletes taking charge of their destinies. There may a small kernel of truth to that for some people, and race plays more of role in sports than many are willing to admit.

However, I believe most folks hate this move because LeBron jerked around Cleveland for years, then announced his intentions in the most classless, ham-fisted way possible, and then had a huge, ostentatious ceremony in Miami with his bestest new buddies like he did us all a favor by letting us in on the celebration. All while ESPN reported it as such and didn’t dare ask one hard question.

Campbell even says, “his guy came to Dwayne Wade’s kingdom, and gave up his own kingdom to do it,” and says “kids in the ‘hood” will love that. Really? Kids in the ‘hood will love the fact that he didn’t want to try to win on his own, and decided to come to Wade’s “kingdom” and ride his coattails? I’m not exactly the most street guy in the world, but that sounds like a total pussy move to me.

Later, LeBatard echoes this idea that LeBron’s move is daring and a bold new direction: “James and Wade weren’t going to be the next Michael Jordan the way they were doing it, trying to go through each other.” And now we all hate them because we hate change, according to him. No, Dan, we hate this because it’s a total cop out on LeBron’s part. The guy who was always sold–and sold himself–as The King decided he’d rather be a lesser peer in someone else’s realm.

LeBatard says the tone and style of this move was “hip hop” and as such offended people who are turned off by that genre. I guess it was kind of like hip hop, but more like really bad hip hop. The kind with album covers of someone sitting in a bejeweled throne next to a Mercedes being washed by a chick in a white bikini, as a mansion glistens in the background. The kind of hip hop that disappeared by the early 00s and now litters used CD bins everywhere.

Which brings us to another big problem with LeBatard’s article: While LeBron James is one of the best basketball players alive, Luther Campbell is one of the worst rappers ever. Ever.

I still can’t believe that he was singled out by cranky family values types, because however filthy his songs are, they’re also some of the dumbest, talent-free things ever committed to tape. In the battle between terrible rappers and book-burners, I have to side with the Luther Campbells of the world, but it’s a shame that someone without an ounce of creativity or talent became a poster child for free speech.

Maybe it’s just a regional thing, and Miami is more provincial than I thought. Maybe Luther Campbell is revered as some sort of pioneer in Miami, and there’s statues of him next to Dan Marino, Don Shula, and all the coke dealers who built downtown. But I defy anyone, with a straight face, to tell me that Luther Campbell has made any music worth listening to for more than three seconds.

Five years ago, 2 Live Crew played at The Gathering of the Juggalos. Enough said.

I understand that if you’re a Heat fan (or write about them), there’s really no way to justify this like a rational, non-sociopath would. All you can say is THEY THE BEST AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT YOU JUST A HATER. If LeBatard had simply done that, his article would be unexceptional.

Instead, he put Luther Campbell, the Hurricanes, Supreme Court cases, and LeBron James into his op-ed gumbo, hoping it would come out nice and spicy-like. Nice try, but it wound up a pretty unappealing mix. Still mixed better than anything Campbell’s ever done, though.

Baseball

The Specter of Steinbrenner

bigstein.jpgThis seems as good a time as any to tell you about my ephemeral run-in with George Steinbrenner.

I grew up in a Cop Town north of New York City. It seemed like everyone I knew as a kid, their dad was either a policeman or a fireman in the city. (My dad was a notable exception; for most of my childhood, he veered between insurance, finance, and alcohol-aided unemployment.)

One of my best friends was a huge Yankees fan. His dad was a cop. His dad also worked the security detail for George Steinbrenner. My memory is vague on the finer points of the nature of this work; I think he may have been The Boss’s driver at some point. I don’t know if this work was actually part of his NYPD duty or something on the side. My guess is the latter.

When we graduated from elementary school, my friend’s dad got us tickets for a Yankee game. Somehow I squeezed my mom for enough money to buy a program while I was there (our family finances were mired in the Dirt Poor range at the time), because on the few occasions I got to go to a baseball game, I HAD to score it. I don’t know where I picked up this filthy habit, but it still haunts me. For four years, I brought a scorebook to every Met game I went to for the same purpose.

Midway through the game, my friend’s dad decided to give us a treat by bringing us “behind the scenes” in the Yankee offices. A security guard waved us through a couple of imposing glass doors, and then a blazer-wearing tour guide showed us around the “backstage” area, which looked more or less like any other office, except with pictures of Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth everywhere.

He then walked us through the slim hallway that backed the press booths. We stopped briefly behind the WPIX booth, where Phil Rizzuto and Lou Piniella (post-managerial stint) were manning the mics. I waved at them and Scooter waved back. I felt weirdly excited about it.

We were then brought back into the office area, and into a big office. It had a very large desk in it, and it had a fantastic view of the field, with wall to floor windows. But apart from that, it was relatively sparse: a modest bookshelf, a few chairs, and that was pretty much it. Not even any art hanging from the walls. Its only opulent feature was a couch shaped like an old fielder’s mitt, which I decided was the greatest thing ever.

A TV was on in the office. I saw that Don Mattingly had just singled. I’d been carrying my program around this whole time, attempting to keep up with the game. So I leaned on the desk to mark this down on the scorecard.

“And this,” the tour guide said, “is Mr. Steinbrenner’s office.”

I recoiled from the desk in abject terror. I felt like I’d just grabbed Genghis Khan’s spear. I’d toyed with the prize possession of a terrible, wrath-filled warlord. My friend later told me I leaped a good five feet from the desk. I thought that somehow, Steinbrenner would know I’d touched his desk. He’d just feel it, sense his aura being disturbed, and come storming up there to punish me in the most gruesome way possible. But the tour guide just laughed and we moved on.

I don’t remember anything else from that game, except that we left early because it was a night game and not an ideal era to be out too late in The Bronx (even if you were accompanied by a cop). Because I was too scared that somehow, George Steinbrenner was going to find out I’d leaned on his desk and…I don’t know, fire me?

I was way too old to be thinking such things, and I knew it, but the notion would not leave me. The specter of Steinbrenner was far too strong.